"Miles had talked around it. But I hadn't understood how bad it really was. The Countess told me exactly. What Galen did to you. The shock-stick rape, and the, um, eating disorders. And the other disorder." She kept her eyes away from his body, onto his face, a dead give-away of the unwelcome depth of her new knowledge. She and the Countess must have been talking for two hours. "And it was all so deliberately calculated. That was the most diabolical part."

"I'm not so sure about the shock-stick incident being calculated," Mark said carefully. "Galen seemed out of his head, to me. Over the top. Nobody's that good an actor. Or maybe it started out calculated, and got out of hand." And then burst out, helplessly, "Dammit!" Bothari-Jesek jumped a foot in the air. "She has no right to talk about that with you! Or with anybody! What the hell am I, the best show in town?"

"No, no." Bothari-Jesek opened her hands. "You have to understand. I told her about Maree, that little blonde clone we found you with. What I thought was going on. I accused you to the Countess."

He froze, flushed with shame, and a new dismay. "I didn't realize you hadn't told her at the first." Was everything he thought he'd built with the Countess on a rotten foundation, collapsing now in ruins?

"She wanted you for a son so badly, I couldn't bring myself to. But I was so furious with you tonight, I blurted it all out."

"And then what happened?"

Bothari-Jesek shook her head in wonderment. "She's so Betan. She's so strange. She's never where you think she is, mentally. She wasn't the least surprised. And then she explained it all to me—I felt as though my head was being turned inside out, and given a good wash-and-brush."

He almost laughed. "That sounds like a typical conversation with the Countess." His choking fear began to recede. She doesn't despise me . . . ?

"I was wrong about you," Bothari-Jesek said sturdily.

His hands spread in exasperation. "It's nice to know I have such a defender, but you weren't wrong. What you thought was exactly what was going on. I would have if I could have," he said bitterly. "It wasn't my virtue that stopped me, it was my high-voltage conditioning."

"Oh, I don't mean wrong about the facts. But I was projecting a lot of my own anger, into the way I was explaining you to myself. I had no idea how much you were a product of systematic torture. And how incredibly you resisted. I think I would have gone catatonic, in your place."

"It wasn't that bad all the time," he said uncomfortably.

"But you have to understand," she repeated doggedly, "what was going on with me. About my father."